The International Astronomical Union and the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science have sponsored a major work on the history of astronomy, which the Press publishs are in four volumes, three of which will be divided into two parts. Publication commenced with volume 4, part A. The history of astronomy has never been tackled on this scale and depth and this major synthesis breaks wholly new ground. The individual chapters of each volume have been prepared by leading experts in every field of the history of astronomy.

Since man first looked towards the heavens, a great deal of effort has been put into trying to predict and explain the motions of the sun, moon and planets. Developments in man's understanding have been closely linked to progress in the mathematical sciences. Whole new areas of mathematics, such as trigonometry, were developed to aid astronomical calculations, and on numerous occasions throughout history, breakthroughs in astronomy have only been possible because of progress in mathematics. This book describes the theories of planetary motion that have been developed through the ages, beginning with the homocentric spheres of Eudoxus and ending with Einstein's general theory of relativity. It emphasizes the interaction between progress in astronomy and in mathematics, showing how the two have been inextricably linked since Babylonian times. This valuable text is accessible to a wide audience, from amateur astronomers to professional historians of astronomy.

Newtonian scholarship has taken great steps forward in the last half-century. The recent completion of critical editions of Newton's mathematical papers and of his scientific correspondence, as well as the publication of the first volume of his optical papers and of variant readings of the Principia in the original Latin, have made most of Newton's scientific work generally available for study and analysis for the first time. This has provided a better understanding of Newton's Principia and Optics especially regarding their origin and interpretation, much of which has remained obscure for several centuries. Some of the new developments and insights are presented in this book by several of the scholars who have made these primary sources accessible, and by others who are using them to elucidate Newton's work. Most of the papers included were presented at the Symposium on the Foundations of Newtonian Scholarship, held at the Royal Society in London in March 1997.

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences, and one which has repeatedly led to fundamental changes in our view of the world. This book covers the history of our study of the cosmos from prehistory through to a survey of modern astronomy and astrophysics (sure to be of interest to future historians of twentieth-century astronomy). It does not attempt to cover everything, but deliberately concentrates on the important themes and topics. These include stellar astronomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the time subordinate to the study of the solar system, but the source of many important concepts in modern astronomy, and the Copernican revolution, which led to the challenge of ancient authorities in many areas, not just astronomy. This is an essential text for students of the history of science and for students of astronomy who require a historical background to their studies.

The pendulum is a universal topic in primary and secondary schools, but its full potential for learning about physics, the nature of science, and the relationships between science, mathematics, technology, society and culture is seldom realised. Contributions to this 32-chapter anthology deal with the science, history, methodology and pedagogy of pendulum motion. There is ample material for the richer and more cross-disciplinary treatment of the pendulum from elementary school to high school, and through to advanced university classes. Scientists will value the studies on the physics of the pendulum; historians will appreciate the detailed treatment of Galileo, Huygens, Newton and Foucault’s pendulum investigations; psychologists and educators will learn from the papers on Piaget; teachers will welcome the many contributions to pendulum pedagogy. All readers will come away with a new awareness of the importance of the pendulum in the foundation and development of modern science; and for its centrality in so many facets of society and culture.

Why did science emerge in the West and how did scientific values come to be regarded as the yardstick for all other forms of knowledge? Stephen Gaukroger shows just how bitterly the cognitive and cultural standing of science was contested in its early development. Rejecting the traditional picture of secularization, he argues that science in the seventeenth century emerged not in opposition to religion but rather was in many respects driven by it. Moreover, science did not present a unified picture of nature but was an unstable field of different, often locally successful but just as often incompatible, programmes. To complicate matters, much depended on attempts to reshape the persona of the natural philosopher, and distinctive new notions of objectivity and impartiality were imported into natural philosophy, changing its character radically by redefining the qualities of its practitioners. The West's sense of itself, its relation to its past, and its sense of its future, have been profoundly altered since the seventeenth century, as cognitive values generally have gradually come to be shaped around scientific ones. Science has not merely brought a new set of such values to the task of understanding the world and our place in it, but rather has completely transformed the task, redefining the goals of enquiry. This distinctive feature of the development of a scientific culture in the West marks it out from other scientifically productive cultures. In The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, Stephen Gaukroger offers a detailed and comprehensive account of the formative stages of this development—-and one which challenges the received wisdom that science was seen to be self-evidently the correct path to knowledge and that the benefits of science were immediately obvious to the disinterested observer.

The fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century.